People Watching and Richard Thompson

It’s Thursday, the 26th and I’m standing on a sidewalk in Nashville, waiting for the doors to open at the Bellcourt Theater. Located, oddly enough, on Bellcourt Avenue. Behind me is guy who is probably in his late fifties, early sixties and he looks just like a guy I know named Stan whom I used to work with at some dismal copy shop years ago.

A few minutes ago I had walked away from the ticket counter thrilled to have been able to score two tickets to the show, shown as sold out for days. I don’t know why they had tickets at the window and I don’t care. It meant that I did not have to walk up and down the line asking if someone had tickets to sell. It would have been my own fault – procrastination is one of those failings that you can truly only blame on yourself. If you can find the time or the inclination.

This guy, the one now standing in line behind me, asked where I got the tickets and I told him and he hurried to the counter. By the time he was done I was back in line with my wife and I called to him as he walked by, asking if he was able to get one too. Fake Stan took this as an invitation to sidle into the line next to me and ask if I’d been a Richard Thompson fan for a long time. I told him that, yes, I’d liked RT for a while and he proceeded to ask if I had been at the show in New York where Fairport Convention opened up for Fleetwood Mac. It’s important to note here that the show Fake Stan was referring to took place sometime in 1970 and so, depending on when, exactly, the show was, I may or may not have been born yet. The guy behind me, probably the same age as Fake Stan, had been at that show and the two struck up a line friendship. Which was fine by me because for one, I’m not that sociable and two, my lovely wife was in line with me and she’s much more fun to talk to.

We waited in line for about forty-five minutes before the doors opened and it gave me a lot of time to people watch. Even though I’m not the social sort, I still enjoy watching other people. It’s probably the writer in me. And it was quite a group to watch. The militant lesbians in front of us, one with armpits hairier than mine, the other with a pretty but severely pock-marked face. The two extraordinarily festive young college gentlemen about ten people back in line – one dressed nightclub cowboy chic, the other in something pulled from Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean wardrobe. Middle-aged couples, families with teenage children, young adults, even a grandparent or two, hearing aids good to go. Ordinary people with a strong hippie flavor – the aged rebels grown comfortable sometime during the Reagan administrations but still connecting with their roots. Best of all though was the Marlon Brando look-a-like who slid into the seat in front of me, accompanied by a younger lady friend. From what I could gather, he was the father of the one in the Billie Jean suit.

It may sound like a strange assortment of people for a single show but, when you think about Richard Thompson, it makes perfect sense. He’s been playing since the late sixties and is one of the most gifted guitarists in the world. And he has a talent for songwriting that others in the industry marvel at. I could fill a book with quotes from music greats about how seminal he has been to their careers. Greatness that spans the better part of forty years collects fans through every decade. Grandpa remembers the stuff from the Fairport Convention years, or when RT was cutting albums with his now estranged wife Linda, while the young kids heard some of his stuff on the local alt station and bought a few CDs to find out about this aging troubadour.

I think that to be a good writer, you have to be a good people-watcher. You need to have some understanding of what makes them tick – not just the ones you like to write about, but the ones who may make you uncomfortable, too. Want to know how to remedy the accusation that your characters are paper, that they are one dimensional and lifeless? Go to a Richard Thompson show and just watch. And enjoy the living, breathing organic thing that is the crowd. And then write.

The doors finally opened and we streamed in to see a great show. We were in the third row: perfect seats. But this is a post about people watching and so a commentary on the show (as great as it was) will have to wait.